Recently in Medical Malpractice Category

Can you sue a nursing home if you or a loved one were denied proper care?

That's a good question and one that many are asking after the recent news out of California. An elderly woman died after a nurse declined to perform CPR on her, citing the facility's policy.

The facility maintains that it was an independent living facility and not a nursing home. But that leads many to ask: What are a patient's rights in a nursing home?

In 2011, New York legislators left out a proposed provision in the budget which would have placed a cap on medical malpractice damages.

Let's talk about that concept and the overall idea of medical malpractice.

Under Gov. Andrew Cuomo's 2011 proposal, the state would have set a maximum amount that a plaintiff could recover in a medical malpractice case for pain and suffering damages.

That amount would have been $250,000, the Post-Standard of Syracuse reported.

Some think that homosexuality can be "cured." They believe that environmental factors are to blame, or that sexual preference is a choice that people make. The American Psychological Association agreed that homosexuality was a curable disorder until about 1974 or so, when the second edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II) was published.

Nowadays, most people find those who believe in "gay cures" to be a outside the mainstream of thought. Research is showing a stronger link between genetics and homosexuality. It's no longer listed as a mental disorder, and society in general has become more tolerant.

Patrick McMahon, 50, was labeled a troublemaker. In fact, he only lasted four months as a transplant coordinator with the nonprofit New York Organ Donor Network. In his brief time there, he alleges that he witnessed families being pressured to consent to organ donation, premature declarations of brain death, and even a quota system implemented upon the employees, reports the New York Post.

McMahon’s lawsuit cites four cases as examples of alleged malfeasance by the nonprofit. In one, a 19-year-old victim of a car accident was declared brain dead despite the man trying to breathe and showing signs of brain activity. In another, he claims that the family of a woman that had previously received an organ donation was pressured to pay it forward.

Brookdale Hospital dangerous? Brownsville, Brooklyn has a reputation for being rough and unsafe, and according to a federal study, its hospital is no different.

In a March survey by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Brookdale Hospital was found to have violated a bevy of health and safety regulations and the violations threaten the hospital’s Medicare and Medicaid funding, reports the New York Daily News.

If a similar story has happened to you, you will definitely want to contact an Manhattan medical malpractice attorney.

For several weeks, Ann Berlin received cancer radiation treatment with the understanding that if the treatment did not work, she may die, reports the New York Post. Six radiation treatments later, St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital contacted the 73-year-old woman and said they made a mistake, she didn't have cancer after all. And the radiation treatment she undertook was completely unnecessary.

Now, Berlin is suing St. Luke's for the wrong cancer diagnosis.

Kaitlyn Nelson, a 24-year-old woman from Brooklyn, won a $60 million judgment for a botched acid reflux operation.

The woman received the surgery at Maimonides Hospital in December 2000, when she was just 13, and as a result, Nelson's stomach is now paralyzed, reports the New York Post.

In 2004, New York changed its law allowing mothers to sue for emotional distress following a stillbirth caused by a hospital's negligence. Now, the first stillbirth lawsuits are winding their way through New York courts that will gauge the price of a stillborn.

In one lawsuit, an eight-months pregnant Brooklyn woman went to a hospital complaining of abdominal pains. The hospital sent her home with painkillers. That night, she lost her baby when she went into labor at home. After a lengthy lawsuit, a court awarded the woman $1 million for her pain and suffering, reports The New York Times.

Manhattan local Vangelis Kapatos jumped out of the ninth-floor window of his New York apartment on Monday, according to Reuters. Fortunately, Kapatos landed on a large mound of trash that was left uncollected during the city's intense snowstorm last week. Katharina Capatos, Vangelis' aunt, said many of the residents had been complaining about the accumulating trash and layers of snow that were piling up along the sidewalks.

"I'm thankful that [the trash] was never picked up," Capatos said as her nephew currently remains hospitalized under critical but stable condition. New York police officials said Vangelis Kapatos left no suicide note before leaping out of the apartment and that the garbage below had broken his fall.

Abida Mahmood and Sajid Mahmood claim their doctor thawed and killed their embryos, shattering their hopes of having a family of their own. According to the New York Post, the Queens couple filed a malpractice lawsuit against the Long Island hospital they went to for fertility treatments.

Last year, Abida Mahmood and Sajid Mahmood were incapable of conceiving and visited the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Center for Human Reproduction at Manhasset's North Shore University Hospital. The couple's NY personal injury lawyer Stephanie Ovadia said her clients' physician, Matthew Cohen, started an in-vitro fertilization program for the couple. The procedure involved extracting Abida's eggs, fertilizing them outside her womb, and implanting the eggs back into her.